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THE STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY

This summer, Spectacle presents three incredibly savage, incredibly savory kung fu films that launched the career of martial arts star Sonny Chiba and became landmarks of Japanese exploitation cinema – THE STREET FIGHTER TRILOGY!

Following the crossover success of Bruce Lee (who died the previous year), the mighty Japanese film company Toei decided to gamble on a considerably darker, more nasty brand of martial arts action with an unknown actor as the star. The result was The Street Fighter– a hard-boiled, gore-drenched exploitation classic that spawned an entire franchise of sequels and spinoffs.

Praised by fans as some of the best kung fu films of the era and worshipped by Tarantino for decades, don’t miss this chance to experience grindhouse exploitation at its finest!

Sonny Chiba IS Tokuma Tsurugi: a high-priced, high-voltage assassin hired by the Yakuza to kidnap the heiress of a deceased billionaire. When his demands are too high, all-out chaos ensues. Shortly thereafter, the body count starts to grow…

A significant shift away from the classic, technical martial arts, THE STREET FIGHTER features numerous sequence of raw, shockingly graphic brawls and battles that garnered the film the first ever X rating solely for violence. Chiba is pure brute force, an anti-hero that acts not out of honor, but for self-satisfaction. But even for a character with zero morals, Chiba’s magnetic personality shines through, lending his mercenary killer a sparkly, devilish demeanor.

A prime cut of juicy 70s kung-fu topped with an X-ray blast to the skull, THE STREET FIGHTER is unadulterated escapism of the bloodiest order.

*WARNING: THE FILM CONTAINS GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE*

RETURN OF THE STREET FIGHTER
Dir: Shigehiro Ozawa, 1974.
79 min. Japan.
In Japanese with English subtitles.